My Hands Around Your Neck (So Tight With Love)
by define-serenity
Summary: [Hannibal AU] Blaine had been averse to the idea of being psychoanalyzed, poked and prodded at by someone who didn't belong in his head. Dr Sebastian Smythe proves to be a kindred spirit. ONESHOT. COMPLETE.


**disclaimer:** without prejudice. the names of all characters contained here-in are the property of FOX and Ryan Murphy. no infringments of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission.

**warnings:** D/s overtones (breathplay), ANGST, violent imagery

**author's notes:** Hannibal!AU. this is dark and twisty and kind of kinky in a way i haven't done before. ahum. knowledge of the series is required to get the details of the imagery but not absolutely necessary. all you really need to know is that the deer/stag is a representation of Blaine's deteriorating mental state, the reasons for which i won't go into, but you can always try the first episode? title taken from _Up in the Air_ by 30 Seconds to Mars. special thanks to Kay for beta-reading

* * *

**My Hands Around Your Neck (So Tight With Love)**

* * *

He stands naked (_is he?_) at the edge of a black sea, a starless night but the moon full and bright above him. His hand twitches, a nudge of antlers, the stag at his back.

His house floats illuminated in the distance, a beacon, an anchor, but–_Can he swim?_

"Blaine?" a far voice coming closer, his latest anchor, a hand on each of his improvised wings.

He blinks and his body pulls down towards the ground, both feet planted firmly on bordeaux carpeting.

He stands naked (_he is_) in front of a window overlooking the street below, lights casting circular shadows that spin into figures eight along the sidewalk, only interrupted where the antlers of a specter have intruded.

"Am I awake?"

The heat of a body behind him. "Yes."

"How can you be sure?"

"I'm sure," Sebastian whispers, a smooth caress up his arm, nails at his shoulder before fingers loop around his neck. His breath hitches, his eyes drift shut and he tilts his head back, lips and teeth at his other shoulder. He struggles for air but his heart beats steady, the claws of darkness receding to huddle in a corner where it waits, anticipates, remains patient until its next chance.

Sebastian allows him some breathing room before denying it again, fingers deftly, gently, working around his throat, his erection poking at his bare ass.

Yes, he's awake.

.

He can't say when it started, when the lines between them blurred, if there were ever any to begin with.

He'd been averse to the idea of being psychoanalyzed, someone prodding around his head to stir up things he tried so desperately to keep from pouring out. And Sebastian was good at it; he was young for being so accomplished already but his intelligence made up for his youth. In that respect they were the same, two kindred spirits, the odd ones out, never truly accepted. But whereas Sebastian had carved out a place for himself in the medical community, he was an abnormality even among his peers.

Jack perceived him a fragile teacup of precious china but never hesitated to place him center stage where anyone could knock him over, even the most observant person; Beverly thought him unstable yet showed him kindness, more her nature than her professional curiosity he suspects; Alana avoided being in a room alone with him because she feared she couldn't control that curiosity, yet he often felt closest to her. More often than not, that was because she talked to him as if he were her patient.

And then there was Sebastian, someone equally capable of shattering him into a million indiscernible pieces as he could touch him featherlight and careful, talk around a core truth until he decided to open up, or address an issue so directly that he felt like bursting with it.

It was... unpleasant, to say the least.

.

He walks on water, waves cushioning his footsteps the closer he draws home. He has trouble breathing but it's calming, the way his lungs fight for oxygen, search for every scrap they can scrounge for, like victims of a terrible crime.

Heavier steps track behind him. Plopping in the water. _Hooves_.

"Come back to me, Blaine," Sebastian calls, a freer flow of air down his windpipe, clarity he's never been granted before. "Are you with me?" Sebastian sounds closer.

He sways back into a strong body, one he trusts with his own, like fire in an oxygen rich environment.

"Blaine," a strict command.

"_Yes_."

He's back in the bedroom. Night prevails outside. The sound of hooves echoes evermore.

"It's not there, Blaine," Sebastian says, his breath a whispered secret against the shell of his ear. "It's not real."

The stag stomps its hooves, clicking on the concrete, breath a misty glare. How can it not be real?

"This is real." Sebastian moves a hand down his abdomen, nails leaving temporary marks. His muscles tense, high strung and taut. "And this." Teeth scraping over that spot behind his ear, nibbling at his skin. "And this."

Sebastian's fingers wind around his throat again and he whines, for freedom, for more, he's not sure. All he knows is another breathless jerk of his body, Sebastian leaking against the small of his back, and an exhilarating rush of ecstasy.

.

"Do you trust yourself, Blaine?"

They sit in armchairs facing each other, Sebastian straight and calm, him sagged back, uncomfortable, fidgety. Sebastian reaches inside of him, his fingers curl around his ribs and he cracks them wide open tangential to his spine, so he can discern the electric currents that make his heart beat.

The clock ticks five times.

"Sometimes," he answers long and difficult, pain throbbing behind his right eye. "I can't always–trust my eyes."

"And when you close them?" Sebastian asks, shifting to the edge of his seat, elbows on his knees.

He blinks, ghosts imprinted on the lonely side of his eyelids. "I don't like closing them."

"Because of your dreams."

"Because–something's got inside."

Sebastian's gaze pins him down, igniting a twin desire to avoid his green eyes while searching for the proverbial other side. Those eyes pierce through to the roots of him, to the things that keep him anchored, or rather, the things he believes keep him anchored; his family of strays, Jack, Alana, even though its his own mind that should bring him greatest solace.

But not him. Not his mind. Not ever.

Not with the darkness lurking, grinning at him Cheshire-cat-like, growling in the impenetrable black, abiding its time as it waits for the inevitable: the moment he invites it closer. He does, every time Jack sends him to a new crime scene, a new tableau for him to analyze, another soulless canvas he paints himself into. And each time it gets harder to turn down the offer–_may I beg entrance?_

_No. _

"Maybe the stag is you."

He sighs, impatience jolting him out of his seat. "Or maybe it's Garret Jacob Hobbs."

"And he's what?" Sebastian asks, eyes following him across the room. "Haunting you?"

"A part of me?" he offers. "I spent so much time trying to know Garrett Jacob Hobbs, to see him. Past the slides and vials, beyond the lines of the police reports, between the pixels of all those printed faces of sad dead girls."

"You're not a serial killer, Blaine."

Sebastian's footsteps on the floorboards.

"You're not driven by the same impulses."

"I fight my impulses," he says, the confession alone conjuring the darkness closer. "There's plenty of serial killers that do. Psychopaths–" he turns and flinches back, Sebastian far too close for comfort.

"You're not a psychopath," Sebastian says. "They can't relate like you can."

But then what does that say about him? How can he wear their skins so form fitting, calloused against his own, tight around his body like a well-tailored suit. He wore the Shrike's skin, took a walk in his shoes, killed those sad girls all the same. Saw his life end. It must've gone somewhere.

"You take on their perspective, inhabit them for a while. Garrett Jacob Hobbs just got too close."

"You mean I got too close."

"Maybe I mean you were pushed too close."

"I'm not Jack's puppet," he says, idly wondering why Sebastian insists Jack's the evildoer. It's still his choice every time he forces himself to look. "Or–_teacup_."

Sebastian draws a step closer. The clock ticks.

"We're all puppets, Blaine," Sebastian says. "Slaves to our fears, to our bodily needs. Slaves to our desires."

"To our gifts," he adds, his heart rate rising infinitesimally.

"Yes."

He's never much liked eye contact, it felt like someone jamming hot pokers into his eyes and scrambling about, ripping out something that was his alone, attempting to draw conclusions by divining his cerebral cortex. He can't look at people without envying their normality, without his own instability showing.

With Sebastian, it's different. For some reason he can meet his eyes, maybe because they're able to keep things professional despite Sebastian peeking under his cranium, maybe because somehow, confoundedly, they're the same. Only they're not, they're in no way the same, merely similar around the edges. Sebastian has learned to make sense of things, navigate his way through bureaucracy and social convention, swim the shark-infested waters of expectation and face the crashing waves of mental illness.

Sebastian turns him around, he can't quite decide what he is, a great actor or calm personified, a professional or a Frankenstein experimenting with body parts.

He averts his eyes. "What are you a slave to, doctor?"

He realizes too late he asks Sebastian what he desires.

"Good food. A shot of Courvoisier in an Italian coffee."

An orator in a grand arena.

"Sex," Sebastian adds as an afterthought.

His lashes flutter for an unguarded moment. "Very–earthly desires."

Sebastian takes another step closer, so close his cologne stands out, a taste of the man he pretends to be.

"What are you afraid of, Blaine?"

He swallows hard but his mouth goes dry, a sting of what could be a tear at a corner of his eye. "_Surrender_," he whispers, almost flattened by this pillar of truth he plants at their feet.

Sebastian raises his hands to his face, but he rears back, turning on his heels, fighting the onslaught of tears now threatening to spill free. Sebastian sees right down to the heart of him, bloody and beating, a murderous rhythm he tries so hard to control. How can Sebastian not be repulsed by the things he allows inside?

"Have you ever considered that surrender is your ultimate desire?" Sebastian's voice sounds clear.

He turns around, a line running salty down his cheek.

"There's no shame in surrender, Blaine."

Sebastian stands tall, unshaken, hands in his pockets, a fortress to his perforated mobile home. He's never seen Sebastian shaken, not once, not even when he wrapped his hands around young Abigail's wound, blood spilling red all over the kitchen floor.

But he can't surrender, it's too dangerous. What if it unleashes a monster far worse than Garrett Jacob Hobbs, worse than The Angelmaker or the Chesapeake Ripper? What lies hidden in the caverns of his addled mind should never be unleashed. It's safer that way. For him. For everyone.

"Goodbye, doctor," he says, defeated by the cold hard truth of self-knowledge.

.

He'd never considered his deepest desire to be a sexual one. A sense of asylum at most, but not this. Yet here he is, winding into knots pressed against Sebastian's naked body, little friction and a bare minimum of movement so far. Sebastian knows what he's doing, what pressure points to tease at, the intercostals running along his spine, the brachials at his collarbones, that spot low in his groin.

It verges on pain, the pads of Sebastian's fingers puncturing tendons and ligaments, overloading his nerve centers, half moons blemished into his skin. Sebastian smooths his nose over his shoulder, up into his curls, inhaling deeply; he holds his breath for a few seconds but he's been quite thorough–he's been washed and scrubbed and shaved, no trace evidence of his previous cologne.

He smiles, reality a foreign concept in this room. "Why do you do that?"

Sebastian's tongue spoons at his earlobe. "One of my weaknesses I'm afraid."

He shivers with desire for his own weakness, a need for disremembrance, Sebastian, an oxygen-free environment, all and nothing.

"Turn around." Sebastian allows him some agency.

His eyes find the apparition outside for a split moment and it comes crashing back, red mist perspiration, molded earth, the deafening sounds of gunshots.

"_Now_," the voice behind him taps into his most primal need, erasing fear and doubt, bypassing a short circuit altogether.

His toes catch clumsy on the rug, but Sebastian steadies him, always, not just in this room. Their bodies meet, Sebastian hard against his stomach, waves of pleasure rotating at the base of his spine. Sebastian will rip it out, leave him slack and weary, boneless, but not before he loses control under his clinical supervision.

Sebastian captures his lips, a thumb curling around his chin to pry his mouth open, gaining access he needs no permission for. Everything he comprises has become Sebastian's, his head and heart and desires, his body, all in Sebastian's skilled hands. His head tilts to facilitate silent commands, hot tongue a wet line to his lips and Sebastian never teases, every move meticulously planned, deliberate like a surgeon's cuts.

A hand closes around his throat.

.

He returns to Sebastian days later, urged by a new loss, a fresh chunk sloppily cut from his sanity, a voluntary incision he can't stop from bleeding. There are transfigured faces spinning through his head, blood on his hands, and the ever-present animus at his back.

Sebastian's office disheartens, the deep reds and dark oak accents meant to reassure but it only imbues him with a cinematic sense of foreboding. This is a room of endedness, his last stop before hitting finality: Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

"You were expecting me?" he asks, noting a second glass of wine on the desk.

"Jack called."

_Jack_, he sighs. The puppet master.

He pinches the bridge of his nose, hoping it'll chase away the mounting headache pushing at his temples. This room has become a mirror, making him face his neuroses, distorted in the glass; he needs it, ever since Jack launched him back into the field. Ever since Garrett Jacob Hobbs.

"And that?" He points at the rectangular box on one of the seats' armrests.

Sebastian gestures at the box. "By way of apology."

Apprehension settles in his bones. Up until a few days ago they were just having conversations. Unconventional ones, but there was a clear principle of turn-taking, back and forth, without any social convention standing in the way of broaching tough topics. But whatever fragility Sebastian manages to tap into he's come to appreciate; Sebastian offers him new insight, in himself or in his cases. He's often thought Sebastian would make a more balanced profiler than him.

But now this present, even as an apology it blurs a line he's not even sure existed between them; it disappeared last session, Sebastian wearing his skin for a change, slipping it on like a glove, now wiggling his fingers to slip it on tighter.

He picks up the box, lifting the lid slowly.

"Cologne," he laughs, an involuntary reaction.

"What you smell like shouldn't be a matter of practicality," Sebastian says, sitting down. "It should reflect the person you want to be."

"The person you want me to be," he corrects, challenges, because who's playing at puppeteering now?

A smile plays around Sebastian's lips, an admission as sure as the denial left unspoken. "The person you could be," an equally enticing challenge, Sebastian all too aware that more than anything, more than surrender and a vain attempt at playing hero, he craves a change, proof that men like him are capable of throwing their lives around.

He's been drowning for a while, falling with a vertiginous longing to hit rock bottom. But he's afraid that might mean his death. Or worse, a straitjacket.

He sits down, the bottle at his feet. "Thank you."

The clock ticks. He digs his fingers into the leather of the couch.

"What will it take to let me help you?" Sebastian asks, the question simmering somewhere deep into synapses where another question lies in wait–_may I beg entrance?_

"What with?"

He meets Sebastian's eyes, easier every time, but they never grant him any reprieve–that gaze tugs at his eye sockets, wants to seep inside and fill every nook and crevice of his empathy with (self)reflection. Yet the good doctor doesn't treat him like a patient.

Green plays at his irises.

He chuckles half-heartedly. "Surrender," he realizes, while his heart morse codes _yes_.

"It isn't until we give into our desires that we find clarity, Blaine," Sebastian says, his desires superimposed shadows over his own. "Until then we're just children, lost in the woods, without a clear path ahead or breadcrumbs to guide us back home."

It's true, he is lost, somewhere between shaking it off (_keep on looking_) and the horror of hallucinant animal cries. How long before he gets locked up in a gingerbread house, fattened up and eaten alive?

"What would I need to do?"

Sebastian stares at him, unblinking. "Trust me."

.

Trust doesn't come easy to him. It's an elusive thing, flitting quietly around the next corner before he can bring it into view. He trusts Jack, but deep down there's tiny teeth gnawing at the false sense of security the Bureau offers; it's Jack who put him in the middle of all this again. He trusts Alana with his emotional well being and Beverley with his friendship, but the more he confronts that trust the more it seems an unhealthy, made up because society has told him to and the rules of society fail him again: he doesn't even trust himself.

So Sebastian becomes yet another paradox, the snake slithering underneath the front porch. But an animal's behavior is predictable. _Trustworthy_.

"What do you want me to do?" Sebastian asks, his breath hot against his lips, thumb viselike around his chin. It's Sebastian's way of asking _may I beg entrance? _

– . – – . ...

"Everything," he whispers, every cell in his body throbbing, reaching forward for something familiar, Sebastian's tongue outlining his lips, the aching part of him that needs release, but more than any of that he craves surrender.

Sebastian lies him down on the bed and stands tall over him, naked, exposed, his skin an indistinct pale in the moonlight, his eyes such dark black holes he can't discern any color, instead they're filled with the same swarming flies he scattered in Garret Jacob Hobbs.

His heart skips a beat, his mind casting phantasmic illusions over Sebastian's head, a halo of antlers–his lover part man, part beast.

"Anything," he croons, closing his eyes wide shut, an arm over his face, knees drawing up in an insane white hot panic. His mind never stops playing tricks, there's only one sure-fire way to exorcise his demons–

Sebastian slides his hands down his legs and settles his body in between them. "You're in control, Blaine," he says, prying his face free again. "Remember that."

A thicket of antlers punches holes through the sheets, his heart beats panicked and a cold sweat breaks out across his skin, the mattress claiming him like quicksand, his delusion liquefacting his surroundings with only one foothold to anchor him to shore.

Sebastian adds pressure to his throat, cutting short his alarm. "Just say the word and I'll stop," he says, and nudges his legs further apart.

.

He takes one look around the bathroom and decides against it, the space an intimate pressure to his lungs, Sebastian's request cross-stitched on the brown tiles.

"I don't feel comfortable doing it here," he says.

"How about the kitchen?"

His fingernails dig into the palms of his hands.

Five minutes later he's easing his jacket off his shoulders while Sebastian soaks a towel in a bowl of hot water, the straight razor prepped on the counter between them. His skin crawls with unease, the kitchen as much Sebastian's territory as the bathroom, the place where he's transformed his love for anatomy.

"This will go easier if you take off your shirt as well."

Sebastian wrings out the towel, the muscles in his forearms straining, his shirtsleeves bunched up to his elbows. The few buttons loosened on his shirt reveal his collarbone, spotted by a constellation of freckles.

He's a mess compared to Sebastian, his curls perpetually disheveled while every strand of Sebastian's straight auburn hair lies in place, his stubble days old but Sebastian clean-shaven, Sebastian's crisp shirts telling of a control he hasn't felt for as long as he can remember.

He pops a few buttons on his shirt but stops, a shiver spiraling down his vertebrae. He understands what Sebastian hopes to achieve with this exercise, the singular focus meant to steer him towards a balance that has eluded him up until now. Yet the thought of surrendering to a man so unshakable instills him with a paradoxical fear; he's not Sebastian's patient, but would he try to fix him if he found him broken?

"But I guess that'll do."

Before he's fully aware of it Sebastian stands behind him, draping the towel over his face, the heat of it sinking prickly into his skin.

"_Relax_," Sebastian whispers, lips at his ear, fingers imperceptible down his back. "It's just you and me."

"And my demons."

The darkness preens, coils around his heart like barbed wire, shrapnel in his lungs.

Hands on his shoulders. "We'll take care of those."

"How?"

Sebastian removes the towel. "Do you trust me?"

He closes his eyes, breathes freely: "Yes."

And that's how he ends up sitting cross-legged on the kitchen counter, Sebastian behind him, one of his long legs dangling off the side. His head lands back on Sebastian's shoulder and there's a mad burn between his shoulder blades, his comfort zone invaded, a million insecurities blistering beneath his skin.

"Relax," Sebastian repeats, but the itch refuses to subside.

His face gets lathered with homemade shaving cream, both of them silent throughout.

The razor clinks on the marble and he knows it's time to relinquish his trust, place it in a man he couldn't read even if he tried, a man who's as big a mystery as he is, yet far more stable.

A hand guides his head left and right, fingers pulling his skin taut for a smooth shave. It's easy to get lost in this, Sebastian mastering the razor as if it's something he does for other people on a daily basis, slow even strokes, and he finds his mind focused on the blade with a pinpoint clarity he's rarely felt outside the tenement of the men he chases for a living.

Sebastian forces him to sit up straighter, tipping his head further back and a terror seizes him at his temples, the blade a cold sting to his jugular. For the first time ever the roles reverse–the razor opens his throat to access his trachea, exposes his vocal chords, treated carefully with sulfur dioxide to harden them–

His fingers curl tight around marble, a steady tap-tap of applause stopping him from breathing, the creature in the darkness burrowing alongside where he'd allowed Sebastian in.

"Stay with me, Blaine," Sebastian's voice reaches out a hand for him to retrace his steps. Or was he the one applauding?

This is Sebastian's design, fingers down his cheek, down to his jaw, remaining so close to the skin he understands it now, Sebastian's demand for him to forget that his world comprises psychopaths and bullets and totem poles of bodies. He doesn't have to be that person here. Not now.

He smiles.

"What's funny?" Sebastian asks.

"Trust," he answers without a second thought, because it is funny, this invisible thread stretched red from his index finger to Sebastian's; it ties them together across several degrees of separation.

"Yes, it is."

Sebastian cleans his face with a wet towel, shaving cream replaced by the sting of aftershave, and his eyes droop closed. He loses all sense of his body, the outlines of him suspended on dust, weightless in a heavy existence.

And there's only white. Only silence. The warmth of Sebastian's touch.

A scratch at the back of his throat that could've been a whimper.

"How does that feel?" Sebastian's voice sounds low in his ear, fingers still skimming down his skin.

"Clean," he manages, even though the rest of him remains a mess. "Clear." He blinks his eyes open, time and space returning, the hard surface beneath him, the chill of the marble countertop soaking through his clothing.

"Tell me, Blaine," Sebastian says and he makes an instinctive half turn, his search for green a fast growing desire, something seeded into his skin like a parasite. "Your mind's clear."

White.

Silence.

"What do you want?" Sebastian asks.

And then he truly sees (see? _see?_), a glimpse of a distant stranger in Sebastian's eyes, a taste of the man he could be, held together, composed. In control.

He fears surrender. But he wants it. His body throbs with it, a tingle settling in his thighs and between his legs.

There's a nudge of antlers at his shoulder, urging him closer, and he can't tell up from down, left from right, there's only him and Sebastian, two bodies in a room where anything seems possible now.

He jolts forward but Sebastian catches him with a hand around his throat, his lips part in a gasp, but his airflow cuts off and his eyes roll back into his head–his groin seizes up and his dick twitches in his pants, before Sebastian allows him a taste of his tongue to his lips.

He doesn't have to say how badly he wants to be dominated.

.

He understands the process of his surrender, the hypocrisy of a safe word with Sebastian's hand so tight around his neck, the sadistic trust he places in a man he knows so little about–maybe he's really out to torture himself, self-inflicted wounds his only way out of this spell of lunacy.

Sebastian kisses him deep before taking his ability to breathe, two fingers brush deep inside his ass and he shivers, wide open for the taking, light-headed already. He hauls anchor and lets go, loses all touch with reality, and when Sebastian starts filling him up his tether snaps.

His heartbeats turn into a canon, doubled and out of sync, Sebastian the eye of the storm, a fixed point, while he's the storm clouds twistering around it like bottled chaos, their dance the lightning ensued. Because that's what it becomes, a dance, breath granted every time Sebastian pulls out, stays there until he's got a firm grasp again and deprives him when he pushes inside him.

His throat strains against the pressure, his lungs burn, the pain overruled by the pleasure shuddering through his groin, his cock leaking down on his chest. Their bodies become a writhing chorus on top of the sheets, with only his gasps and the slick slide of Sebastian's push-pull as background static.

He's a ragdoll, experiences everything at a distance, muted sounds and dull colors, but his pleasure sears through him like a drug, infuses his veins with a liquid euphoria, making his blood run darker beneath his skin.

His head feels as if it's about to explode, the shortage in oxygen sending distress signals to his brain, but Sebastian keeps moving, keeps pushing and he digs his fingers in Sebastian's back.

"Trust me, Blaine," Sebastian whispers and lays himself bare for the first time, part of his armor lifts as he belts out a moan, adding another, "_Trust me_", something strangled and sinful laced with an almost sense of shame. His hips slam forward hard once, twice, three times–

His arms fall slack to the bed, the build-up heavy yet transcendent, an itch that needs a cure and it's painstaking how it starts rolling through him, one convulsion after the other and his breath caught between Sebastian's fingers.

And then Sebastian's hand disappears at his highest point of release, just as he spills all over his chest in hot streaks, his world turns white, he's lost all concept of control and finally understands the true meaning of surrender.

He passes out to the steady refrain of _ah_, _aah_, _aahh_ escaping Sebastian's vocal chords, a telltale sign of his bondage to his own desire.

.

They never talk about it, not outside the confines of how Jack perceives their relationship. It's a non-issue in his sessions and never comes into play when he seeks out Sebastian's advice, not a secret, not a fact, but a lie trapped out of phase with the rest of the world.

It never happened until it happens again, when the darkness inside him becomes too dense for him to breathe around and the stag reasserts its presence.

So Sebastian chases it away.

.

When he blinks his eyes open Sebastian's fully dressed, perched at the foot end of the bed, waiting patiently for him to wake up. There's a glass of water and some aspirin on the bedside table, his clothes in the same neat pile he folded them in.

His limbs are weary and fatigued, moving half a second slower than he wills them, but his mind feels blissfully empty, like someone erased or reset his hard drive, wiped the slate clean, even though some impressions inevitably stay behind.

He sits up, needles at his temples, his chest wiped clean of semen. He idly wonders how long he's been out.

"How are you feeling?" Sebastian asks, moving to sit down next to him.

He swallows down the pills, his throat raw from barely breathing.

Fingers caress a path down his spine and he closes his eyes at the kiss applied to his temple. He lilts sideways into shelter, but Sebastian pulls back, a professional distance between them again once he touches around his throat the way a physician would, feels at his skin until he winces.

"I'll get you something for the bruises," Sebastian says, his tone clinical again, detached. "The swelling will be gone by tomorrow."

The bed dips at Sebastian's absence and his voice hasn't returned to him; he's not sure what purpose Sebastian's staying could serve. He got what he desired most, an emergency exit should his world ever start crashing down around him again.

He breathes in deep, his lungs expand further than they've done before and his skin feels like his own. It won't last, silence never does, the darkness will return to his doorstep soon enough, stretch out long and lazy in the spot it knows he allows it, and it'll charge for assault every time the cracks show.

His fingernails dig into his palms. He wants to evade relapse for a little while longer.

He takes a quick shower, water cleansing and healing, and traces his fingers around the perfectly aligned bottles on the vanity, all equal distance from each other as if measured by a ruler, all the brand names facing forward.

When he returns to the bedroom the bed sheets are gone.

And he remembers asking, "What are you a slave to, doctor?"

He's always admired Sebastian's attention to detail from afar, in his drawings, in his cooking, in his meticulous application of psychoanalytic practices. It's only now that he's been at the receiving end of his scrupulous planning that he can begin to understand it.

Sebastian falls on some spectrum too.

Maybe some day soon he'll be able to take a walk in Sebastian's skin.

.

He stands naked (_he is_) at the edge of a black sea, a starless night but the moon full and bright above him. His hand twitches, a nudge of antlers, the stag at his back.

"Blaine," Sebastian calls, a kiss to his shoulder.

A hand brushes around his chin, clean-shaven, clear, while a thumb parts his lips.

The heat of a body behind him.

"Why–" He swallows around the curiosity seeping into his bones. "Why were you alone?"

Sebastian breathes a smile and applies his fingers to his carotid arteries–his head tilts back and his mouth drops open, breath catching when Sebastian's teeth join his fingers. "Same reason you were," Sebastian says.

"I was waiting for you."

* * *

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**if you can, please let me know what you think!**


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